Pages

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

What's Old is New or How I Learned to Pay Attention When Sorting

Since none of my recent internet acquisitions came in the mail today (they aren't late yet though), I decided to just go through a bunch of my trade bait and duplicate stacks. After all, I needed something to do after work and maybe I could find someone to send all of this stuff to. So, I got to it.

After a few minutes of flipping, I came across a card that made me smack my forehead.

Now missing Jon Perlman was hardly like missing an old Greg Maddux; not even like missing a beat up Jason Marquis. The only reason he ended up on the Cubs roster in '85 was because the pitching staff was more beat up than a cheap pinata. After going 1-0 with an 11.42 ERA in 8.2 innings, he was released in October. He stuck in the majors for another two years with San Francisco and Cleveland, but only for a total of 20 games.

This annoyed me because Jon had been a gaping black hole in my collection that (apparently) should have been filled over a year ago. Oh well, no big deal; I pulled the exact same card in a re-pack box a few weeks ago anyway.

Then, it happened again with another nondescript pitcher:

Don Schulze's Cubs career lasted 5 games from '83-84. He went 0-1 with a 7.94 ERA in 17 innings. The biggest accomplishment he had in a blue uniform was being part of the the trade package that landed Rick Sutcliffe. He hung around the majors until 1989 and was at best mediocre over that time.

Same story as with Perlman though; Don had been a gaping hole in my collection. I actually put effort into landing the card pictured below at my LCS, flipping through stacks of unsorted cards for a few hours. Again, not a huge deal as it only cost me 25 cents and since when is looking through baseball cards an unpleasant task? Nevertheless, I felt silly.

I can forgive myself for forgetting either of these guys names and skipping right past them in a pack of cards. After all, they played in a combined 11 games in a couple of disappointing seasons. However, all I had to do was turn the darn things around:

At any rate, I just acquired two new cards for (essentially) free. So, I guess I should be pretty happy about that!